IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS)
Volume 21, Issue 5, Ver. 6 (May. 2016) PP 87-95
e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845.
www.iosrjournals.org
Political Utopia `really’ matters
Smrutipriya Pattnaik1, C. Upendra2
(Doctoral Student, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India)
(Associate Professor, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India)
Abstract: How do we bring justice in this world? Why can we not create a society of equals? How do
we attain this condition politically? Does emancipation require politics? These questions, other than
those elaborately addressed by Terry Eagleton in his book Why Marx Was Right, brings us back to the
same fundamental question: after all, what is the problem with Utopian imagination? The essay
centers around this argument: In response to anti-utopianism, we assert that nothing but utopia
ascertains the dream for a better future. The essay attempts `utopian resurrection‟ retrieving it out of
its `tragic fate‟. While it recognizes the many recent claims to utopia, it specifically draws support
from Kolakowski, White, Bloch and Jameson. Though these had inclination to Marxism, we can draw
the spirit of hope, the right to daydream, and that one day the human condition will want for no more
change.
Keywords: Utopia, hope, Marxism, Socialism, capitalist-triumphalism, ideology
I.
INTRODUCTION
“Another world is possible” – any such claims is „arbitrarily‟ posited as dystopian, violent and insane. Of-late
utopia is looked at as a controversial term in and outside of political theory, especially, amid the triumphalist
claims of liberal-capitalist democracy. It has become a commonplace belief that utopianism means
totalitarianism, living under an oppressive political regime that neither values an individual nor their freedoms.
Utopia is looked at with utter suspicion and disregard both prior to the fall of the communist empire and latter to
it. In the process, both socialist ideas and fascist ideas were placed in the same realm because both followed the
principle of „control them through their obedience‟. This misunderstanding took its toll on Marxism in theory
and practice. The coldness toward utopia persuades us to address important concerns of one and all in
contemporary times: How do we bring justice in this world? Why we cannot create a society of equals? How do
we attain this condition politically? Does emancipation require politics? These questions, other than those
elaborately addressed by Terry Eagleton in his book Why Marx Was Right, [1] bring us back to the same
fundamental question: after all, what is the problem in Utopia? The entire essay centers on the argument that
nothing but utopia ascertains the dream for a better future. By doing so, the essay attempts „utopian resurrection‟
retrieving it out of its „tragic fate‟. It specifically draws support from Kolakowski, White, Bloch and Jameson,
even though they were inclined towards Marxism. It also recognizes the many recent claims to utopia and
reaffirms that we can draw the spirit of hope, the right to daydream, and that one day the human condition will
want for no more change.
II. REDRAWING THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT
Liberal capitalists, declaring to the world that western capitalism has triumphed emphatically (claiming it as best
of all the possible worlds) over all its rivals, immensely propagate the needlessness of utopias. The fall is
metaphorically seen as the end of ideology, politics, history and violence. For them the world is deceived by the
utopian futuristic imagination. The promise that the past and present will be redeemed into a new future is seen
as absurd besides, the triumphalists‟ claims renders „politics driven by ideology‟ with utter suspicion. Both
Francis Fukuyama‟s The End of History and the upsurge of globalization is the only alternative claim to bear
witness to this triumphalism. Such widespread propaganda jeopardizes dreams of an „Earthly Paradise‟ resulting
from our great human effort. It also subverts our belief in utopia as the ultimate human predicament. The effect
of this predicament resulted in the post-Soviet fear of utopias. Anti-utopianists draw their motivation from John
Rawls‟s theory which labels it as „realistic utopias‟ – the central feature being the workable (achievable) wellordered society. This is not the end of the story. The picture of „another world‟ changes and broadens with time
and history. The inner-urge for a just and equal world demands a lot of things – not just economic
transformation but philosophically speaking, the conscience of individuals. In this regard both the praxis
approach (generally emerging from Marx‟s anti-utopian utopianism) and the realistic politics are problematic.
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The question which is relevant today is: “Is utopia a by-gone idea on a global scale?” It is necessarily not. There
have been societies that have never experienced utopian movements to transform their social condition. Why
have these societies not embraced utopias? This makes the anti-utopian slogans weak cornered by a counter
assertion – why not follow the ideal. The ideal cannot be despised for its fantasmic character. Rather, it is
valuable because it drives our practical world too. It will mildly identify with the „collapse‟ of a society. How
can societies take flight from this decadent condition? There are several criticisms laid against the Utopian
attempts in the twentieth century – all of them having a common line of argument – all those ideologies have an
underlying violent metaphysic, conformity at any cost. Do these criticisms fall in line with the (Berlin wall and
Soviet Union) endism?1 Definitely, there is a scare while the capitalist west is marketing apocalypse. Many
critics exhausted their minds by being loud about the non-existence of Socialism, Communism or Marxism. All
these paradigms lost their ontological status. Realistic utopias focus on the pragmatic aspects of a well-ordered
society leaving behind hard realities which are supposed to have had suffered elimination. The idea is that the
world cannot be perfected, but can be bettered. The issue is the need for making the world unrealistically and
unreasonably ideal. The contemporary urge for a reasonably just world combines the historical, social, economic
and political perspectives that conjoin in understanding the human condition (not just in terms of basesuperstructure relationship). The euphoria of the capitalist west that they have won the war again lures us back
into the utopian imagination.
The new political imagination reconciles this tension between the ideal and the actual. Actual may be the given
condition but not a desirable or the desired state as such. The actual always becomes idiosyncratic leading to the
revival of the ideal. Realistic utopias also speak the truth – the imperfectability of the human condition. That one
has to come to terms with the „given‟ brute picture of the world implies something very difficult to accept.
Imperfection cannot be perfected but it is also not clear as to what kind of unevenness of the world is let persist.
The fear is that there is a big trade-off here, the most terrifying and dispassionate apathy that deludes our
conscience for a fair world. If a fair and just world is an indicator of erratic thinking then it shows us the poverty
of our conscience itself. To alleviate our conscience levels we need to build what Louis Mumford called “castles
in the sky”, similar to what Landauer referred to the inability of language to capture the utopian spirit.ˆ [2] That
the world has to be reasonably just is not in the conscience of individuals further provides utopian imagination a
strong footing. The perennial picture of the human condition is perfectibility and this „tragic fate‟ throws us into
the world of idealizations. It gets a psychoanalytic touch where the obsession for the lack only multiplies.
This proliferation of the urge for a better world is never exhausted. Historical forces cannot come to an abrupt
end or run out of ideas. No-where becomes now-here, with no necessary reference to socialism. It is to be noted
that the ontological basis of socialism is risked by keeping utopia open-ended, without any pre-emption. No preemption means no primacy or reservations for or against any political ideology, not even to radical democracy.
We have to take such a risk to restore utopian thinking. What kind of hope does it manifest in the mind of its
believers? To answer this we should raise another question: Is it the doomsayers or its romantics who are
generating the more compelling insights into the unsettled topography of contemporary world politics? Utopias
that provide a cracked mirror to the past and a distorted analysis of the present cannot hope to tell us much about
the future possibilities. This kind of futuristic concern lays upon us certain ethic – in the name of people or
community to come (as emphasized by Benjamin, Derrida and others) we need to be honest about our present
convictions for the future. The transformation aimed at forces a priori fate on to the future generations. Are
justice and equality ever concerns for us? If they are, then it shows our diffidence for a fairer world, which takes
care of both individuality and the promise of a (coming) community. There are a lot of philosophical-political
contestations regarding the ethics of transformation – especially, the messianic element of the transformation.
With a renewed urge for utopia we can begin a proposition to grant the messianic role to utopia itself. However,
we are not sure, considering the opposition between Benjamin and Zizek, about when it will come – after the
day (Benjamin) or unconditional presence of the messianic moment (Zizek). [3]
The magnificent challenge is to initiate a change (or transformation through revolution) and sustain the change.
It raises the Rousseauean understanding that the civil society is according to the will of the people. Looking at
twentieth century‟s experience of revolutions, the reliability of spontaneity, rebelliousness and expression of an
unfilled social imagery [4] is questioned. We have seen how vehemently suspicious are post-holocaust critics
about any utopian principle imposed on to us as a metaphysical doctrine. Tracy Strong presents a very
depressing remark about the twentieth century: “the past century claims to have been the morally worst-century
in human history.” [5] Looking at the way `hope‟ and `revolutions‟ affected human affairs brings bewilderment
to one and all – how could the human condition turn so morally decadent in the name of hope? One way of
looking at it is that all violence has eventually become fundamental and has arisen from thinking through the
1
“And many sigh with relief at the suggestions that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the disintegration of the
Soviet Union, and the thriumph of political liberalism, with its realism and pragmatism, this dark chapter in the
history of human inequity might have been finally closed.”
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banister (here, through the western cannon) [6]. Change is desired when a society lives through dark times –
understanding the „times‟ is very important. Hannah Arendt‟s principle of thinking without banisters2 is a
possible way of looking at the revivalism of utopias. The idea of „shared imagery‟ itself is a big problem, thanks
to the penchant for „difference‟ and „diversity‟. It is even more severely impossible in the post-failure scenario.
There is a disclaimer here. The negative propaganda against the (Soviet) communism by the west outweighs the
violence fundamental to the revolutionary change itself. However, the bad image created (that communism as
nightmarish) poses a forceful threat here: Is a non-imposing and non-totalitarian perspective of utopia possible?
The triumphalist claim sees no such possibility collapsing all alterities.
William Morris‟s News from Nowhere [7] is treated as a utopia without utopianism [5] with a preference to
fellowship or brotherhood (“one for all and all for one”). It is not a simple idea to make a collective feel that the
current state-of-affairs demands radical change. The plea for an alternate community is a colossal task for any
given socio-political condition. The commitment to transformation is weakened by this wavering conviction of
all the people. This may take us back to the cannon. The differential treatment of the cannon can be seen in his
non-necessitating of socialism for transformation. The imagery of the world contains in it the point of departure
from Marxism/Socialism by being sympathetic to these historical paradigms. Nonetheless, there is no promise
of absence of violence or conflict of paradigms. It is unthinkable instead. The reason why we have to retain the
hope is that the moment of the utopian condition is momentary – in other words, there is an urge to escape or
take a flight away from the place we land. This hope is jeopardized by capitalist denouncing of the hope thesis
through its suspicion and disregard for other paradigms. In the following section we will revisit some of the
classical works that talk about the significance of utopia.
III. DRAWING THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT
3.1 Kolakowski: The Death of Utopia Reconsidered
Leszek Kolakowski made one of the profound discussions on the idea of „death of utopia‟ [8]. He points out the
pejorative sense of utopia, from our everyday speech to grand socio-political discourses. Referring to
philosophy, he says that it is full of epistemological utopias - that have aimed at absolute certainty of
knowledge. The best example that can be taken from the history of philosophy is Rene Descartes‟s obsession
[further seen in Edmund Husserl] for finding a solution for the ultimate foundations of knowledge. Looking for
ultimate foundations is like looking for perfect harmony, not only in the epistemological sense but also in the
transcendental sense. Husserl was greatly influenced by Descartes in his phenomenological project
[phenomenological reduction] directed toward pure consciousness. For Paul S. Macdonald those were the
radical beginnings of philosophy at different stages of history witnessing „cognitive affective orientation of the
whole self‟ [pure subjects of cognition] [9, 10]. It comes with an urge for a presupposition-free, unprejudiced
approach to knowledge. It calls for identifying the ultimate ground of grounds [also seen in Kant] – realizing the
absolute without the divine. The idea of certainty is an epistemological concern. In what way it is connected to
political utopia? It would mean that if knowledge is certain in its attainability, so do the perfect state of the
human condition. The idea here is that a radical skeptical approach would spell the ruin of European culture.
These are the fears of modern philosophy. Did this influence the thinking of Karl Marx? Let us assume that the
above has been dominantly present in Marx‟s times and influenced him greatly [though he can be classified as
an anti-German Idealist].
This project was not without adversaries. On the other hand, critics of this project like Maurice Merleau Ponty
and Martin Heidegger were not interested in such meta-considerations. Utopia is generally understood as
creation or attaining of a better world. Going by this definition, how do we label totalitarian tendencies as
utopian? They suspected the absolute transparency of knowledge. From transcendental the focus shifted toward
philosophy of the culture. Kolakowski rightly opines that philosophy cannot discover any universal truths –
despite some advancement made in science. He argues that the 'cultural' role of philosophy is not Truth per se,
but building the spirit of truth [8]. We will come to this point as to how it affected the politics of utopia and
social imagery. It brought to philosophy the primacy of 'being-in-the-world' – where social, cultural and political
forces shape human world. Departure from the transcendental or the absolute characterizes human beings as
meaning-making creatures.
Kolakowski's revealing of philosophy's inability to trace truths, assigning to it the cultural role, exposes
philosophy to several antimonies and contradictions. His understanding is that philosophical perfectionism is
seen in utopian understanding of a perfect world. Further, intrusion of culture into philosophy has
simultaneously affected people‟s belief and attitude toward utopia. There is more imperfectness to human
existence completely inerasable – like the Kantian reflection that “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no
straight thing was ever made” [11]. If humans possess deeply fundamental imperfections, they cannot carve out
2
Arendt speculates the possibility of looking beyond the tradition for new insights into the understanding and
evading of violence. Tracy Strong makes it the central question of his book Politics Without Vision.
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a perfect social order with absolute equality and justice. Liberal social contractualists also give us a challenging
picture, especially, Hobbes and Rousseau. Kolakowski argues that that life of the modern mind is predominantly
anti-utopian. What is anti-utopian understanding of utopia? How is a perfect world characterized? We can have
two arguments here: First, utopia [also referred as a perfect world] is understood as attempts made to bring a
perfect harmony [even unwarranted] and seek absolute conformity through superimposed ideals of a great
society [fascism and Nazism]. All these are externally imposed characteristics. On the other hand, a perfect
world is also understood as eradication of all injustices, inequalities and hierarchies among human beings
[Marxism]. At least the former two ideas did not embark on the principles of justice and equality.
There is another important consequence of handing the cultural role to philosophy. Philosophy began giving
considerable attention to the realm of the political. Carl Schmitt‟s understanding of the political is worth
mentioning here. Attacking the liberal ideal, he conceived political as something that manifests the relationship
of a political society‟s members into friends and foes, and us and them. It keeps the society completely infested
with adversaries. Both imperfectness and political seem to sabotage the goal of „everlasting fraternity‟. Every
attempt to realize this goal subjects the human condition to extreme oppression and evil. This is a post facto
assertion of anti-utopian claim. Kolakowski refers to Zyamiatin, Huxley and George Orwell. It is doubtless
about their profound satires about a perfect world and its debasement of the human itself.
March of humanity toward „everlasting fraternity‟ is highly likely to bring phenomenal violence to the world.
Anti-utopian senses a deep sense of monism [sameness, perfect consensus] in utopian philosophy. In this sense,
any forward leap in this direction is bound to suppress people who refuse to converge. Under this condition, all
collisions are brought to a halt or nullified. In other words, people are treated as creative and free, but they are
all directed toward achieving a particular goal. The variety of human life forms is lost in this process. Utopia is
understood via Stalin‟s Soviet Union, Hitler‟s Nazism, Pol Pot‟s Kampuchea or Milosevic‟s great Serbia. Due to
this reason utopias turned into dystopias, and then anti-utopian in nature. Kolakowski says that the greatest
works of twentieth century political theory focus on anti-utopia crushing all utopian notions. This can be linked
to the problem of perfectibility again. If the world is an imperfect garden, attempting to perfect it is a disaster.
Human perfectibility, in the context of political utopias, is treated as making the society sound monistic. The
above political regimes formulated their respective notions of a perfect world and laid down their respective
plans to achieve them. All of them turned despotic in their pursuit for everlasting fraternity or universal
brotherhood eventually. Kolakowksi classifies them as kakotopias due to their adoption of violent means. 3 He
sees the possibility of universal brotherhood of wolves, but not human beings. This has a counterpoint too. That
perfect equality is always the path toward despotism is one-dimensional thinking. It undermines the forceful
change attempted contrary to the idea that change takes place in the due course of historical progress.
There is anti-utopian bias too. We can deduce two important arguments from Kolakowski: [1] An attempt to
implement a conflictless order by institutional means can be indeed successful only in totalitarian regimes. [2] A
utopian vision once translated into a political idiom becomes deceitful or self-contradictory; providing new
names for old injustices. Kolakowski categorizes Rousseau‟s notion of „one has to compel people to freedom‟ as
possessing totalitarian tendencies. He senses fraternity by coercion in Rousseau‟s idea.4 Life necessarily
involves tension and suffering, and nothing illogical in this reasoning. Kolakowski states that there is deception
in utopia‟s promise of the glory of progress. The glorious future is seen as already existing hitherto as a logical
inevitability, as a psychoanalytical condition; more real than the real. Is it right to categorize utopia as selfrighteous? Are anti-utopians reasonable enough in claiming utopian ideals like „everlasting fraternity‟ as
detrimental to human civilization? Anti-utopian bias is that they suspect any path toward wiping out evil from
society, and evil intrinsic to human nature. They consider it as the dogma of utopianism. They undermine the
confrontation and deep-rooted tension between the hostile basis of human relationships and its opposite, love
and friendship. Our relentless lust for domination and our urge to replace it with love, friendship or fraternity are
under ever-mutual deception and suspicion.
Kolakowski says that a static form of utopia that matches some sort of a Platonic ideal is not always an ethically
blessed society. He not only talks about the philosophical poverty of utopia, but also says that the impossibility
of it is undesirable. He did maintain that after the Marxist revolutionary phase of the late 1960, the idea of
utopia did take a beating, but is coming back. Kolakowski says that if utopia were to ever succeed, then it would
result in a society that would be authoritarian and/or totalitarian. On the other hand, he says that if we keep on
doubting utopia with our skepticism, then we will find it difficult to build anything that would even start
3
4
A kakotopia is defined as a state in which worst possible conditions exist in government, society, law.
Refer to his On the Social Contract.” The “fundamental problem” explored by Rousseau‟s political theory is to
devise social and political institutions such that “each [citizen], uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only
himself, and remains as free as before”. It is not immediately clear whether his theory achieves this goal.
Indeed, at times Rousseau sounds distinctly totalitarian, demanding the “total alienation” of all an
individual‟s rights to the community, and asserting that uncooperative citizens “shall be forced to be free” [2
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approaching utopia, even if not achieving that state or realizing it. This is what he calls a hopeless stagnation.
Further, he says that this state of stagnation will result in immobility and could lead to a situation of chaos. He is
of the opinion that utopia cannot ever be achieved, and at the same time, we need to continue striving towards it.
These two positions are constantly in a state of war with each other with none of the positions coming out
victorious.
3.2 Hayden White: Future of Utopia in History
Lewis Mumford boldly claims that history is the sternest critic of utopias [12, 13]. This has created an alleged
antipathy between history and utopia – translated as where there is history, there is no utopia; where there is
utopia, there is no history. Utopia is a mere wishful thinking and daydreaming. Discussing this point, Hayden
White brings the place and non-place debate here, referring to utopia as anything but historical. Further, he also
mentions the main argument of Karl Manheim: “In the course of history, man has occupied himself more
frequently with objects transcending his scope of existence than with those immanent in his existence [14].
These two positions seem to challenge the realistic nature of utopias. Their understanding goes like this: As long
as utopias project themselves as ideologies, independent of their socio-historical structures, plying from outside
of society, they remain unrealistic, lacking any concrete forms of social existence. In other words, utopia may
sound as a phantasm. This comes to an interesting stage of a dilemma. The dilemma is between the belief that
there is a long story of repression of the utopian moment in history on the one hand, and the allegation that
utopia failed to pay its debt to history on the other.
White proceeds to understand „history as utopia‟s other‟ rather than taking „utopia as history‟s other.‟ [13] How
does the former differ from the latter? In simple terms, the former tends to place utopia as a modernist enterprise
following the principle of disenchantment. It seems to place it as a free-standing principle to derive universal
appeal. The latter speaks of the past-less condition of utopia, absence of a temporal condition. White argues that
in the latter‟s case, it becomes a repressive desire; a desire for a future against the claims of the present [social
system]. Further, he puts forward two versions of utopia; past-oriented and future-oriented. This sounds like a
psychoanalytic condition. We mourn for a past that we never had [historical], and we mourn for a something we
cannot live without [poetic]. How do these two affect our understanding of utopia? There is a problem intrinsic
to modern utopias. To build a future out of the abominable historical past is problematic for the modernists. Can
we imagine or construct a future completely devoid of the past? For instance, was Marx trying to do the same?
If not utopia, there ought to be something else that seriously takes care of human evils. Suppose that historical
mourning refers to actual facts of history [could have been] – there is no flight from history, to call it as
confiscation of the historical by history itself. On the other hand, literary modernism took its flight from history 5
[13] - providing space for the irrational and the uncanny. What needs to be seen is how utopian fantasies enrich
the very notion of political utopia, to be realized in the actual world.
Phantasms cannot be erased from the realm of political utopias. White makes an interesting reference to Marcel
Proust and aesthetic modernism. In this realm, one can imagine oneself [in terns everyday life] being liberated
from the ills of a liberal present and future, being placed in a world that fulfills her fantasy. Futuristic dreams
have taken their seat in the modernist historicism. For the latter, it was a phenomenal challenge to make use of
historical debris they have inherited. Why did the modernist utopias become anti-historical? Why is historical
existence a burden to modernist historians? What can be said of Marx? Can we say that he too followed the
modernist scheme of „flight from history‟? Was his historical materialism heading toward the Edenic bliss or
earthly paradise? There are two rival points here. Some think that utopia involves the liberation of higher
faculties and a contemplative life. On the other hand, it is accused of focusing on the material conditions of life.
The anti-historical slayer perpetually downsizing utopia resulted in bringing forward another criticism. George
Kateb criticizes that utopia is not only anti-historical but also fails to value temporality and glorifies immortality.
This is like what Fredric Jameson states that every historical phase has its own utopia. Kateb‟s concern can be
translated like this: how is it possible that we can manifest utopian principles as a permanent possibility of the
human condition. By being skeptical to this possibility, Kateb, like other critics, seems to be wary about human
beings. Prior to judging Kateb‟s worry, we have to make a presupposition. The presupposition is that it is
inevitable to get lured into the idealistic imagination, when the actual condition seems completely adversarial in
nature. If one is asked to conceptualize a „just world order‟, one cannot be indifferent to the idealistic approach
by mere focusing on the practical politics. What is the way to confront the present and the past? White seems to
have no trust in these futuristic fantasies. He makes interesting reference to the American approach to war,
global waste, environmental depletion, and nightmares of heat deaths etc. The kind of the present we are placed
in forecloses the possibility of a better world to our children [13].
This can be linked to capitalist global triumphalist argument. The belief is that the end of the cold war also
contributed to the futility of the utopian thinking. Sociopolitical transformations have two dimensions to it: one,
5
Hayden White mentions Izra Pound, George Eliot, Woolf, Kafka, Richard Joyce etc., as representatives of this
ahistorical literary modernism.
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just superstructural changes and the other, fundamental change. The latter is beyond the scope of a liberal
capitalist framework. For fundamental changes, bringing here the idea of Judith Shklar, we need a radical
approach to sociopolitical transformation. We need to be attentive to one important aspect: utopia is the only
thing through which change is desired for a better future. Most of the theoretical paradigms take a flight from
the „given‟. It is a mark of utter disregard for the current accepted realities. Modern utopia seeks an escape from
modernity, discontinuous with earlier religious and mythical chronotopes. They should not dream of the glory of
the “once upon a time” in the past, rather focus on the philosophy of the „not-yet‟. From the political theory
point of view, both are nostalgias, one for the past and other for the future [the tension between what might be
and what ought to be]. The present is caught between these obsessions.
White comes to an understanding that what is realistic and unrealistic about utopia is not to be decided by
history alone. He mentions an interesting example from Sigmund Freud‟s Civilization and its Discontents. Freud
opines that if civilization itself is the cause of certain illness we are suffering from, it is delusory to think of
society itself as a malady. James Joyce‟s protagonist Stephen Dedalus makes a similar argument in A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man, “history is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” [15] It is contradictory
that we seek solutions from history when it is nightmarish in nature. For White, utopias of the past are regressive
and of the future are progressive in nature. Eventually, he shows bias toward utopian thinking, referring to
American situation [assuming that it has overcome utopian fantasies], stating it as a dead idea, and is now
history.
3.3 Fredric Jameson: The Politics of Utopia
Fredric Jameson throws sufficient light on the utopian representation of reality. In the last two sections, we have
seen how utopia is characterized as something unrealistic and also abominable in nature. It is also accused of
being ahistorical. In his path-breaking article, Jameson begins his argument stating that utopia offers the
“spectacle of those rare phenomena whose concept is indistinguishable from its reality.” [16] It sounds as if
utopia has a reality of its own and yet has normal social functions. Jameson speculates the presence of two
worlds, one absolutely characterized by misery and poverty, and the other driven by unparalleled wealth in many
walks of life. The interesting aspect is, he sees utopia made-irrelevant in both the domains. Unlike in the case of
Kolakowski and Hayden, utopia is placed closer to politics, besides textual, generic and historical contexts.
Jameson talks about the possibility of utopia in the context of globalization. For him, any consideration for
radical political program systematically outlines other alternative society, which we call utopia. Any practical
politics has to consider utopia seriously.
Jameson approaches the understanding of evil in terms of political utopias. Utopia seems to promise the
elimination of „root of all evil‟,like greed and arrive at a more humane form of life. He refers to Plato, Thomas
More, Joseph Proudhon, Ezra Pound and Henry George who have argued for the abolition of private property.
So how does this become a political tool? Suppose greed is to be controlled by a certain form of repression of
desires [psychoanalytically]. One cannot be sure how this guarantees elimination of desires. Desires are
definitely the source of hierarchies. Marx and some of his predecessors saw property relations as one of the
sources of social hierarchies and individual injustices. One-way of putting it is „if desires are conditioned, you
can control injustices‟. This kind of an understanding is based on some [psychological] essentialist [biological]
reductionism about human nature. But injustices are not tackled by reference to drives, passions, power or
greed. Marx is right in making it socio-structural. What difference does it make in shifting the focus from drives
to historical processes? How is the „root of all evil‟ eliminated without elimination of drives? In Marx, we find
the belief in the material conditions of life accessible to one and all through the structural transformation of the
system. Jameson identifies the root of all evil in a society‟s inability to cater to the productive capacities of all its
citizens. This is not the only evil. Evil is of a profound kind, especially, perpetuated by the political ideologies.
Jameson seems to follow some of the principles of Thomas More. The latter tells us utopians are easy going,
good-tempered, ingenious and leisure loving. He also states that these individuals cling on to the pleasures of the
mind. This sounds problematic. It needs a proper understanding of the political. Jameson states that utopia is
either too political or not political enough. But once utopia is attained, political is erased along with history,
indicative of a general will. Is Jameson‟s point reflective of Fukuyama‟s claim that there is no possibility of
history in the post-ideological world? General will seems to be operative in the context of political utopias.
What does Jameson mean by this? He states that there is something fundamental that cannot be challenged
within the system. It is understandable that total elimination is meaningless to imagine. On the contrary, what
gets transferred from the Old to the New is a question of intense debate. Jameson states, “A Social system in
order to continue must continue its own immunities.” [16]
Further, Jameson asks a very pressing question, “How should we formulate the position of utopia with respect to
the political?” As an immediate response, he says that the utopia emerges at the suspension of the political. On
the other hand, he says that politics is always with us in every sense. It means that it is in the mode of a
ceaseless mental play, changing from time to time, so too the political institutions. Jameson gives us a situation:
political institutions seem both unchangeable and infinitely modifiable which is a paradox. There are
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possibilities of revolutionary changes and equally countervailing forces that contain any such changes. Jameson
seems to qualify political utopias as imperfect and impractical, yet necessary. For him, most changes in human
history occurred in the worst impotent situations. For changes to take place, political has to become external to
the social life, preparing its ground for change in whatever fashion it may be. In times of the utopian
progressions, reality seemed malleable but not the system. This is the most profound observation of Jameson. It
speaks of internal repulsions a system generates against any attempt to bring radical transformation. These
challenges hinder the creative free play of utopia, meaning, they may be restricted to one‟s imagination but not
concrete changes.
This distinction of utopia being present in the mind, but not corresponding to the times we live in, keeps alive
the endless play of fantasy. It would be an interesting exercise to look into the manner in which this endless free
play again manifests into a political idea. But there is an ongoing process where utopia in the form of ideology is
subjected to negation. Jameson, then asks, “Is this to say that we can form no substantive or positive picture of
utopia, short of embracing all the multiple contradictory pictures that co-exist in our collective social
unconscious?” [16] He states this as the fear of utopia or the anxiety of the utopian impulse that confronts us.
However, one cannot escape from these utopian impulses. All those hierarchies and injustices Jameson lists can
only be sorted through an understanding of emancipation. Jameson mentions Adorno‟s understanding here: “He
who asks what is the goal of an emancipated society is given answers such as fulfillment of human possibilities
or the richness of life…” [16] This condition is central to capitalist societies deeply caught in the selfpreservation mode. Contrarily, there is no place for self-preservation arguments in the world of utopia
3.4 Ernst Bloch: The Spirit of Hope
How do we understand the world we live in? How do we address transition from one historical phase to the
other? The past lineages lead us through the present to an unknown future. This is acceptable when the present is
acceptable to us. When we have an unbearable burden of the past on us [unbearable because of the deeds of our
predecessors], we are not sure about „where to go from here.‟ This brings anxiety and fear to us. Is there is a loss
of hope in such situations? Ernst Bloch is uneasy about any form of hopelessness. In his great work The Spirit of
Utopia [17], he talks of bringing hope to the human condition. The emotion internal to us never lets us tolerate a
suppressed life. The question that bothers us in this anxiety is, “What can best help the world become a sane
place to live?” Bloch‟s mind blowing work focuses on the sigificance and inevitability of daydreams [utopias as
daydreams] – of a smooth everyday life, not just the prerogative of the rich. If not for political utopias, at the
individual level, Bloch seems to claim that a life without dreams cannot be imagined. This dream brings us to
the venturing beyond, thinking of a better world. We have been talking about change [radical or otherwise]. It
will not be possible without this treading beyond – nothing but creative free play of imagination. Bloch carefully
avoids abstractions here. He attaches these adventures to what goes on around us, and which is in continuous
motion. It is like history is always operated through the dialectic.
Giving primacy to dreaming beyond is like always living in the futuristic imagination. For Bloch, we always
live in the future. It means there is ceaseless wait for tomorrow, waiting for today to pass by. This futuristic
approach, rightly stated by him, is driven by our fears and anxieties. From the old to the new, hope runs through
all the time. Bloch values hope and the means through which it is kept alive. To live in the future is to dream of
the world „unbecome‟. That individual is pervaded by daydreams due to her bad situation that can be extended
to understand social and political lives. People living under unfortunate circumstances are bound to fantasise a
better future. For Bloch, Marx was one of the first to venture beyond or becoming conscious of it. This act also
brings to our conscience the NOT-YET-CONSCIOUS or NOT-YET-BECOME. Bloch looks for a profound
treatment of the notion of the „not-yet‟.
Bloch admonishes philosophy for lacking a futuristic imagination. He states, “Philosophy will have conscience
of tomorrow, commitment to the future, knowledge of hope, or it will not have knowledge.” To have a
conscience of tomorrow is to have a commitment to the future. This gives rise to the philosophy of the NEW,
opening up to new ways, at times, dangerous, and calls for overcoming those conditions. The task is not easy.
Bloch states that what is radically intended by us is not delivered anywhere, but not thwarted anywhere either.
This preserves the possibility of utopian imagination. We can see that in all the past and current freedom
movements, are inevitably guided by utopian aspirations. We are not sure whether Bloch has any reference to
„everlasting fratenity‟ often mentioned by Kolakowski.
Hope faces another challenge. Bloch very often talks about the “Unbecome”, “Not-yet”, or “Future”. He brings
forth the idea of Hegel. For the latter, „what has been‟ [past-present] overwhelms „what is approaching‟. Things
that have become past-present, totally obstructs the possibility of Future, Front, and Novum. This idea is anyway
contra Marx. Due to this, the utopian principle is unable to achieve a breakthrough, totally distinct from „what
has been‟, despite its explosive dialectics. One such challenge comes from the mythical reference to the Golden
Age and its transposition into the future with a messianic consciousness of the oppressed classes and people. For
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Bloch, Marxist philosophy addresses this question more ardently. From this tradition, we learn to look forward
than backward, trying to know the dawning of the not-yet conscious. For Bloch, hope is not just an emotion but
also a cogntive feature. This still needs a proper understanding of the not-yet. It sounds as if the not-yet, the
„unbecome‟ is „become‟ one day, like dreams realized. Then this argument has an evolutionary punch to it. The
latter talks about the unraveling of specific characters of an organism which belong to a specific species at a
specific point of time. By virtue of this extrapolation, utopia or the not-yet is realized.
The not-yet-conscious brings us close to not-yet-become. This transition shows some wishful images of the
future, consisting of fairytales of the world yet-to-become. It is prominently seen even in the context of political
utopia. There are political fairytales and fantasies of the world to be realized, like the Marxists belief in
“Another world is possible.” These fairy-tales have a peculiar character of the fantasy of a perfect world like
that of the geographical scales of the Eden of Elderado. The not-yet-conscious and not-yet-become are
connected to these fantasies of perfection. Why do they have to be perfect? May be the continuous historical
denial of a just place of an individual, her community etc., for a just world order makes it a daydream fantasy.
This has to do with the profusion of human imagination, which becomes concrete only with the help of utopian
function of that imagination. By refering to Shakespeare and Dante, Bloch seems to signify the dependence of
non-social utopias on the social. Thus, Bloch signifies what lies in the front, than what has been with us.
IV. WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
Michael Walzer discusses the reclamation of political utopianism. He responds to Isaiah Berlin‟s claim that
exciting utopian ideas will never allow the triumph of liberal democracy. The latter, being an ardent critic of
Marxism and totalitarianism desires the decline of Utopian ideas in the west [18]. Critics like Berlin, Karl
Popper, Hannah Arendt etc., conflated utopianism with totalitarianism in which torture and mass murder are
used as justified means to achieve their ends. This conflation is severely criticized by Russell Jacoby. He argues
that this is a confused mismatch of utopian ideas with racial/ethnic, national imperialist and sectarian agendas.
In this sense, there is a severe problem with the received wisdom of scholars and political theorists.
Kolakowski‟s article discussed in the first section makes an interesting conclusion. For Kolakowski, humanity
has to come to terms with two kinds of mentality, both skeptical and utopian. Too much stress on utopian ideals
puts humanity on the verge of catastrophe and unquestioned authority leads to perilous stagnation. This sounds
like an inevitable paradox. While siding with either utopia or anti-utopia, we have to come to terms with what
can be and what cannot be overcome by human will. Utopia was not just something one thought or dreamed
about, it was where you had to live. It is also where one is supposed to die too. This would mean that we only
switch from one created utopia to another – keeping in mind the above argument- needlessly socialist or
communist. But as long as capitalism uses the triumphalist claims, socialism does not lose its ontological status.
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